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I'm hearing the malleability exploit has been used undetected for years. How many people can actually be in the know about such a thing and yet keep silent abou

by Udo 13y ago

I'm hearing the malleability exploit has been used undetected for years. How many people can actually be in the know about such a thing and yet keep silent about it for a long time? That means somewhere there's a very small group of people who have about a million BTC in their wallets, and nobody noticed them. I have to wonder what it looks like when a person suddenly becomes very rich without any explanation for it. Wouldn't at least some of these people have attracted a lot of attention? The cynic in me thinks the lack of evidence left behind probably points to organized crime or even governments at work behind the whole thing.

redthrowaway 13y ago
>I have to wonder what it looks like when a person suddenly becomes very rich without any explanation for it. Wouldn't at least some of these people have attracted a lot of attention? There's no reason they had to actually spend the money. DPR had $85M in BtC yet shared a flat with unsuspecting room mates.
existencebox 13y ago
At the risk of drastically oversimplifying... This seems hauntingly familiar to a pattern I've seen dozens of times in MMO's when the right sort of exploit falls into the hands of the right group of people. Once you've found out about it, the damage is done, and usually now obfuscated in such a way as to be unfixable(e.g. laundering); now a handful of players can control the bulk of currency in a market. "the right people" aspect is the "keep quiet" aspect; and is necessary for the impact to have sufficient time to really grow in magnitude. (right people doesn't have to != normal people) Perhaps I'm just overfantasizing the whole thing in my head; but I like to think (and probably in doing so coloring my perceptions) that there are similarities between certain events in cryptocurrency and game-currency life cycles.
krapp 13y ago
I think a cynical view would suggest it is exactly what it appears to be.

by Udo 13y ago

redthrowaway 13y ago

>I have to wonder what it looks like when a person suddenly becomes very rich without any explanation for it. Wouldn't at least some of these people have attracted a lot of attention? There's no reason they had to actually spend the money. DPR had $85M in BtC yet shared a flat with unsuspecting room mates.

existencebox 13y ago

At the risk of drastically oversimplifying... This seems hauntingly familiar to a pattern I've seen dozens of times in MMO's when the right sort of exploit falls into the hands of the right group of people. Once you've found out about it, the damage is done, and usually now obfuscated in such a way as to be unfixable(e.g. laundering); now a handful of players can control the bulk of currency in a market. "the right people" aspect is the "keep quiet" aspect; and is necessary for the impact to have sufficient time to really grow in magnitude. (right people doesn't have to != normal people) Perhaps I'm just overfantasizing the whole thing in my head; but I like to think (and probably in doing so coloring my perceptions) that there are similarities between certain events in cryptocurrency and game-currency life cycles.

krapp 13y ago

I think a cynical view would suggest it is exactly what it appears to be.